May 14, 2009 6:42 pm US/Central
Man Accused Of Exposing At MOA Is Level 3 Offender
(WCCO)
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Marcus Nelson, 39, of St. Paul is charged with criminal sexual conduct for the two separate incidents at the Mall of America in Bloomington.
Hennepin County
Police say a homeless man will likely spend a lot of time in jail for what he did inside the Mall of America a few times in May.
Police say Marcus Nelson exposed himself to a little girl at the Mall of America on May 3 inside the Disney Store. Police say on that same day he was masturbating on a mannequin inside Gilly Hicks.
On May 7, St. Paul Police spotted Nelson on Harriet Island in his underwear. He told them he was changing his clothes.
It was on May 9 when Nelson was finally arrested after he's accused of exposing himself again at the mall. Four offenses in one week.
WCCO checked his background and found that Nelson is a Level 3 sex offender. He's been convicted of flashing 10 other times over the last decade.
Nelson is one of more than 50 homeless offenders St. Paul Police try to keep tabs on. The offenders must check in each week and Nelson did that.
"The monitoring of homeless sex offenders is always a challenge for law enforcement agencies," said Paul Schnell, a St. Paul Police spokesperson.
With just a couple officers assigned to the job of tracking offenders, departments don't have the manpower to follow them all around all of the time.
Nelson has been convicted of indecent exposure in five cities across the metro. Since the charge is pretty minor, officers can't always see a criminal's past on the statewide system right away. Police believe these offenders know that and that's likely why Nelson has been able to stay on the move and get away with this for so long.
"That information being entered into a system always takes time in terms of the catch up," Schnell said.
Nobody could say for sure why Nelson was still out after such a long history, but police did say policy is never full-proof.
Nelson has been charged with a felony this time around after Bloomington Police found out about his past. He could be in jail for a couple of years, if he's convicted.
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